Do not laugh at their misfortune. It is not seemly so to do, for, in all this wildly-warring world, there are few more bitter cups than the failure of a big financial coup in the which you have invested your own (and alas!) other people's money.
Besides, few of the scores of parties who started fared any better, while many faced worse. Some of them, like the Moody Expedition, returned because they could not make over two or three miles a day, they having to fell the impeding timber. At this rate of travel, the journey would have occupied five years.
Other crusaders returned because they had no food or money, a condition that scarcely makes for progress or health.
Still others came back because they had fallen out by the way, for the trail has the satanic peculiarity of developing all that is surly, selfish, or yellow in human nature. People who are tired, ill, and hungry lift the curtain of their character and forget to let it fall, so that the result is disillusionment to all concerned. Not a few men who started in on pronouncedly amicable terms, eating from the same plate both actually and figuratively, came out brimful with umbrage, hatred and pique. Murder on the trail may be almost a natural impulse.
But all the derelicts who returned had one well-defined peculiarity (albeit a negative one), they came in quietly by the back trails—they who had gone forth full-fed and wanton as young gophers. The North had rolled out their individuality like one might roll out dough. They were "the bitten;" gaunt-eyed starvelings; tatterdemalions who might have posed for Rip Van Winkle or The Ancient Mariner. The North is a goodly country and attracts goodly men, yet, even here, one may lose both his sense and his competence.
"Did no one succeed?" I ask.
"Oh yes!" replies a jocund old gentleman who has lived here these thirty years. "One man got through by hook or crook—chiefly crook. He was a real-estate agent and insurance broker."
Further questions elicit the fact that this broker was not so much a stampeder as an absconder. He was short in his returns to the insurance company and took this means of avoiding arrest. At least, so it was rumoured. He left Edmonton in the late winter with no money, no food—nothing but a small hand-satchel containing collars and blank premium forms. All the way along he insured the trailers on the straight life, endowment, or accident policies, or for sick benefits. They were far enough on the trail to realize that there was a distinct possibility of their requiring one, if not all these premiums, so our broker found fat pickings. Resides, each trailer had begun to think lovingly and longingly of his family at home, and of what a comforting compensation a ten-thousand dollar policy might be to them in the event of his death. Indeed, it seemed almost like swindling the company to take out a policy on this journey. But what would you? Here was their properly certified agent with the requisite papers to boot. One must take what the gods send.
At Athabasca Landing, our broker man stole a boat and made his way down the river. He fed at each camp he encountered; related how he had become separated from his party, and how he was hurrying forward to rejoin them. Under the circumstances, it was only natural that his hosts should supply him with enough food for a day or two. Besides, it would never do to let him die of starvation and he carrying their good money and insurance policies in his satchel—the little black hand-satchel wherein he kept his collars.
He reached Dawson early in the rush, but we do not know how it fared with him there—-whether he crushed his money from stones or bones—for it was probable he took a new name, and, needless to say, he did not return via the overland route to Edmonton.